The British Conservative Government has prohibited sexual education in schools for children under nine years of age and that in secondary school they should be informed about gender identity, the possibility of choosing between seventy-two different options as current theories maintain, to change from one to the other and to consider oneself a non-binary person.
Teachers’ unions have described the new ordinance as “politically motivated” to distance themselves from the Labor opposition ahead of the general elections, on an issue so controversial that it is part of the cultural wars and is capable of attracting many votes. However, there are also many parents who believe that sexual education has gone out of control and it is time for a correction.
Partly for ideological reasons and partly in response to the complaints and concerns of their constituents, fifty Tory MPs denounced that the country’s schools are “indoctrinating” young children, telling them about oral sex, the “practice safe” from hypoxiphilia or erotic asphyxiation (which is supposed to increase the pleasure of some by preventing one’s own or one’s partner’s breathing), and the possibility of changing sex or embracing any of the seventy-two theoretically possible genders.
In response to this, and after a debate lasting several months within the Cabinet, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has changed the Relationships, Sex and Health Education directive for UK schools, and has also declared it mandatory compliance rather than mere recommendations. Educational centers that continue talking about sex to children under nine, or giving ideas of gender identity to those over thirteen, risk being subject to sanctions. Parents must also be informed of what their children are being taught.
From now on the emphasis will be on biological sex and “scientific facts” instead of gender. From the age of nine, students will be provided with basic information about conception and birth and will be taught the importance of family, friendship and respect for others, the danger of stereotyping the roles of men and women, of social networks and online relationships. From the age of eleven, teachers will have to explain that taking photographs of naked minors is a crime. And starting at thirteen, information will be added on contraceptive methods, abortion, domestic and sexual violence, mutilation, abuse, harassment, forced marriages (a common practice in many traditional families of Asian origin) and the distorted view of oneself that can provoke pornography.
Regarding gender identity, the new guideline is that adolescents should be told that it is a “controversial political current” and “a controversial ideology without support in scientific reality.” “We have to protect our children, who are the most sacred thing, instead of exposing them to lessons inappropriate for their age, in many cases excessively graphic, unregulated and without the knowledge and even less the approval of parents,” said the British Education Minister Gillian Keegan.
The Government has decided to stop the practice of schools that are considered “progressive” teaching children that they may have been born with the “wrong” sex and that they can change their sexual and gender identity if they wish to anyone. of seventy-two possible categories, including non-binary person. From now on they must teach that “there are two sexes” and ensure that parents agree with the content of the education given to their children on the subject.
“No boy or girl should have the notion that there are more than two genders or sexes and that they can be changed like a shirt,” says conservative MP Miriam Gates, one of the promoters of the change of course. Not only is it false, but it only serves to create confusion and break the trust that parents should have in teachers.” The so-called Cass report (named after its author) has recently criticized the ease with which puberty blockers have until now been offered to teenagers in the UK.